Responding To Simone Weil - Crucible Journal
Vol. 4 No. 1 (April 2012)Responding to Simone WeilReading Simone Weil is like being exposed to a tornado, being hit on the head and drinking a clearglass of water all at once. I first read the book which this essay came from when I was in Paris, whereI had discovered her, before I even thought of doing a PhD and even before I started my Masters onmigrants in Calais: perhaps it even inspired it, I don’t remember. However, I do remember whenreading this that Weil’s figure of the ‘malheureux’ (the afflicted) exists today, and perhaps in thefigure of the refugee. Later, when I came across Agamben’s work on the ‘bare life’ figure and thestate of exception, I was struck by the similarities to Weil’s ideas of the person struck by affliction.Then I found out that Agamben did his PhD thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, whichmade sense even though he has never referred to her work in his writings as far as I have seen.Her writings covered history, politics, philosophy, science, classics, mythology, religion; she was alsoproficient in Greek, Latin and Sanskrit thanks to a prodigious upbringing and education as well as aninsatiable thirst for learning. But first, some background information on Simone Weil (1909- 1943) asI think it sheds light on much of her writing and where she was coming from. In her short life (deathat aged 34), she was a philosopher, teacher, labour activist, factory worker, farm worker and briefly,a soldier. Born in an agnostic Jewish bourgeois family in Paris, she went to the prestigious EcoleNormale Superieure (ENS) along with the other famous Simone of that time, Simone de Beauvoir. Inher autobiography, Simone de Beauvoir recounts her first- and last- conversation with Simone Weil:She intrigued me because of her great reputation for intelligence and her bizarre outfits.Idon't know how the conversation got started. She said in piercing tones that only onething mattered these days: the revolution that would feed all the starving people on theearth. I retorted, no less adamantly, that the problem was not to make men happy, but tohelp them find a meaning in their existence. She glared at me and said, 'It's clear you'venever gone hungry." Our relations ended right there.After finishing at ENS she taught philosophy at a couple of girl’s schools, was active in trade unions atthis time and on weekends taught classes in French and political economy to workers at the trade unionheadquarters. Then at age 25 she took a year off to work in a number of factories, including the Renaultcar factory and Alsthom Electrical Works in order to get direct experience of the working conditions forworkers in France. She saw with growing concern the rapid industrialization of factories in France asbeing a place for workers’ oppression and exploitation.Weil’s point of departure in her decision to become a factory worker was her desire to experience forherself the conditions of the workers. Despite her active involvement with trade unions and politicalgroups, she felt that only through directly experiencing the conditions as a worker herself, could sheunderstand and thereby propose solutions to improve workers’ conditions:Only, when I think about the major Bolshevik leaders pretending to create a free workingclass and yet none of them- definitely not Trotsky, and neither I think, Lenin - without adoubt have not stepped foot into a factory and therefore have the least idea of the realVol. 4 No. 1 (April 2012)Page 1
conditions which determine the servitude or freedom of the workers- politics seems tome like a sinister farce.In a letter to one of her former students she stated that it was a ‘contact with real life’ she was searchingfor. In joining the factories as one of the workers, she wrote that, “I have the feeling, above all, ofescaping a world of abstractions and finding myself in the middle of real people- good or bad, but witha real goodness or badness”. As one biographer of Simone Weil put it, “Her whole effort was that of astudent, in the old root sense of that word: she had an insatiable, unyielding zeal for testing, for findingout”.Indeed, her time at the factory gave her much to reflect on, coming up with several concrete proposalsto what she saw as the essential problem of factory work as it was currently organized: that it was acondition of slavery which ultimately destroyed the workers’ soul. Her time in the factory marked herforever, indelibly, as a ‘slave’. In letters to friends, she recounts the difficulty of factory life, “I still knowhow to feel joy, but there is a certain lightness of heart that seems to me now, forever impossible”.Reading her factory diaries and articles that came out of that experience, I am struck by how relevantit still is to contemporary factory work and labour; this time no longer in France but perhaps in China,India, or in the cocoa fields in Africa, or child labour in developing countries.Her reflections from her period of factory work also helped to feed into theories she later developed onliberty and oppression, and her wider thoughts on the spiritual and religious meaning of work: in astartling piece she writes about the mysticism of work and of manual labour being a sacrament; thiscame directly out of her factory experience. I find her methodology of ‘direct contact’, and her emphasison empirical data resonates not only with my own beliefs about producing knowledge, but also with theanthropological approach of ethnography. Perhaps she was an ethnographer without realising that shewas one.In 1936 she joined the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, joining the anarchist militia. Howevershe only stayed a few months due to her clumsiness, where she burnt herself over a cooking fire. It wasenough though for her to witness the brutalities committed on both sides, and to produce writings onthe nature of war as well as the conditions for peace. In some of her letters to friends she describedhow war ‘revealed the presence of death in every moment’, and how she felt within herself a capacityto kill.After leaving the war, she went to work for a few months on a potato farm and vineyard. She also tooktrips to Italy and Portugal, where she was to have a couple of mystical experiences. Despite thesemystical experiences which led her to fervently believe that she was Catholic, she refused to be baptisedin the Church with reasons that she gave in her letter to a priest, published in her posthumous book ofessays, Waiting for God. In 1942, she was able to escape to the United States with her family as theGermans occupied Paris (her family was able to take the last train out of Paris to the South,Marseille). After a few months she left the U.S. to go back to Europe; not being able to stand the thoughtof deserting her country to its fate, she wanted to go back and help. We can only imagine the anguishher parents must have felt as they said goodbye to their daughter, as well as the courageous folly ofthis young Jewish woman voluntarily returning to Europe during the war to join the Free French Alliancein London. It was to be the last time her parents would see her.In London, she volunteered herself to be sent to any mission back to France, of course got told that herobvious Jewish appearance made it impossible and instead got assigned a desk job. She was told towrite what French society would look like after the war, to aid the reconstruction of French society- theoutcome for this was The Need for Roots. In 1943, while still in London she was diagnosed withtuberculosis, but apparently reduced her food intake to what she believed residents of German-Vol. 4 No. 1 (April 2012)Page 2
occupied France ate. She finally died from cardiac failure that year at age 34, with the coroner's reportsaying that "the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind wasdisturbed."Simone Weil suffered from debilitating migraines that had no known cause all her life- she describedthis pain as being everyday ‘without stop’. Friends talked about how she would have to stop in midconversation due to a migraine coming on, and also how she ate very little throughout her life, withscholars suggesting that she had suffered from anorexia. Her frailties were exacerbated by her time atthe factory, an experience that she never quite physically recovered from. No doubt all of theseexperiences of pain as well as witnessing the pain of others informed her own writing on suffering, inparticular her essay on The Love of God and Affliction.In her essay, Weil looks at the nature of a kind of suffering which she takes to be different from whatwe usually mean by suffering. To paraphrase, there is a level of suffering possible in the world thatcompletely annihilates the self, that affects on all levels of the person- the physical, mental and socialwhat she calls ‘affliction’ (malheureux). If you suffer and can still say ‘why me?’ then you‘re not at thatlevel, because you still believe you deserve answers, that you deserve justice, and that you are entitlednot to suffer. A broken heart, cancer, car accident- all can be painfully suffered through but withoutultimately questioning the belief that, ‘I don’t deserve this’, or ‘I should not be suffering’: something thatwe in the privileged West particularly believe. The person that affliction strikes no longer has this belief.She likens the afflicted to the equivalent of the slave in Roman times. For Weil in her period, the peoplewho reached this abject state were the factory workers and those who had experienced war. As I readWeil’s writing about the afflicted, I think of: refugees/displaced persons, modern slavery of exploitedlabourers, the homeless, prisoners/tortured persons, trafficked humans, the extremely addicted, theinstitutionalised mentally ill. I think specifically of the prisoners of Guatanamo Bay, existing in a legalno-man’s land outside the law who could be punished with impunity.It is to bend and break under a force in the material world that is bigger than you, helpless before it andrealising that you are nothing before it- whether it’s an economic, political or social force. Economicprivilege ensures that a person never has to reach that kind of affliction because not only can moneybuy a certain amount of physical comfort, but also recognition (as a human being who should not suffer),if not power. In essence, privileged people get to buy themselves out of ever having to experience oreven look at that level and kind of suffering.I also think of the extremely addicted- maybe the situation is even more deplorable and degrading forthem because they feel the force that is breaking them as something internal to themselves (as lack ofwill, self-destructive behaviour) and so it seemingly has less to do with outside forces such as theeconomic; although I would argue that addictions do have economic, political and social origins, andare a product of an addictive society/culture. Also, the addict with (alot) of money is not the same asthe penniless addict. Again, money can buy a level of physical comfort that can make a difference tothe overall level of suffering, even if it is to buy oneself a place in a rehabilitation clinic and treatment.Access to this kind of intervention changes the experience of the addiction, and therefore the experienceof affliction itself.Simone Weil believed that the mechanism which doles out affliction is blind necessity. For her, there isno sense of ‘providence’ as we usually know it, of things meant to happen, of sufferings meant to besuffered. Instead, we are at the mercy of randomness and chance, and experience affliction asnecessity.Vol. 4 No. 1 (April 2012)Page 3
Yet, although necessity and therefore affliction is predicated on blind chance, it is not meaningless; itdoes serve a purpose. She posits that in necessity is the absence of God, and in extreme affliction, thetotal and complete absence of God. She claims that this absence is actually his presence, and goes onto talk about necessity as obedience, and the beauty of obedience- comparing it to the obedience ofnature to the law of gravity. I will limit my focus on her exploration of affliction and that which strikes atthe afflicted figure: force. For Weil, force is what rules the world. In her beautiful essay, The Illiad: thepoem of Force, Weil analyses the literary text The Illiad to show how it highlights the effect andpervasiveness of force, in specific circumstances such as in war, but for Weil in all time andcircumstances:The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force, force that is manipulatedby men, force that subdues men, and force that makes human flesh shrink Force iswhat makes whoever is subjected to it a thing.Force is at the centre of the Iliad, and force is at the centre of the world here on earth. But for Weil men(sic) are not masters of force (despite believing so); for even the victors will at some time have to comeunder its constraint, and again it comes down to the blind mechanism of necessity which distributesforce (and therefore suffering and affliction) randomly, and down to chance:Men are not divided into the conquered, with enslaved and supplicants on one side and conquerorsand commanders on the other. There is not a single man who must not at some time bend under theconstraint of force Valour contributes less to determine victory than blind destiny.She gives the example in The Illiad where both Priam and Achilles have their moments of being theconquered and afflicted. She praises The Illiad for showing how force strikes both the Trojans and theAthenians, randomly and without bias. Sometimes they experience this force as the death of a lovedone (as in Achilles for Patrocolus or Andromache for her husband Hector), as well as their own deaths(Priam pleading for his life from Achilles). According to Weil then, all men are equally susceptible toforce, at different times. Blind chance rather than anything we may do is more the determinant of beingthe conqueror or conquered by force. Is this the nature of being human then- that is, to be at the mercyof force, to live under it, the same way of, “the action of gravity on the fugitive folds of the sea waves,or on the almost eternal folds of the mountains?” (this force being perfectly mirrored in nature).An element of force is it’s affect on the experience of time by people in affliction:Persons subjected to the arbitrary are suspended in the passage of time; they await- the mostdemeaning of situations- the vicissitudes of the next instant; they passively submit to the present. Theydo not dispose of their moments; they do not have a lever to affect the future.Reading this passage reminds me of the experience of irregular migrants; this point is most applicableto what I saw in Calais. They were a slave to uncertainty, exposed to the constant threat of beingarrested as well as time not being their own- their time was not their own because they could not plananything real in their lives for months, some for years, besides how to get to the next step of theirjourney- crossing into England. They had to suspend their future, reduce it to a dream of what life wouldbe like once in England, and like Weil says, ‘passively submit to the present’. However, they were notcompletely ‘passive’ or submitting; if that were so, they would not be there. One thing I learnt from mytime in Calais was that it takes agency to be there, making constant decisions and choices to reachCalais, but also to survive there and plan the next step. Agency was also linked to financial means, theycould be there because they were able to pay their way to smugglers.Vol. 4 No. 1 (April 2012)Page 4
However, listening to people’s frustrations and despair as they saw the weeks and months pass byhighlighted their experience of a frustrated sense of agency- of not being able to put into action whatthey planned, or of not being able to see the intended outcomes to the actions they put inplace. Everyday was a goalless, futile waiting, the actions they could do were mostly related to survival;whereas their ultimate goal, their main purpose for being there in Calais i.e. get to England did not seemto get any closer; and the longer they were there the more futile it felt. It wasn’t any real action that theycould take, but rather a waiting on circumstances to change- an opportunity to cross. This left a mutilatedsense of agency and will.Perhaps it is a question of degrees of affliction and degrees of agency. There are people who wouldfulfil Weil’s criteria of affliction (as opposed to merely suffering), yet who would also exhibit someagency. Could even the Roman slaves have had some agency? Can we ever know, especially if, asWeil says, the afflicted are unable to speak, that we cannot really comprehend their level of suffering,and that they even sometimes pass by us unnoticed, where “we only notice that they have rather astrange way of behaving and we censure this behaviour”.Is it also a matter of being born into something and being used to it, of not knowing any different whereasif people like us were plunged into the same situation perhaps we would experience extreme afflictionbut is there a ‘getting used to’ things like lack of human dignity, physical discomfort if not pain, andhumiliation? Or is it wrong to conceive of it as a constant state, that people move in and out of affliction,as circumstances change and fluctuate. A more dynamic understanding of agency; or does real afflictionmark the person out forever, crippling their will? If not in the irregular migrant, are there people in a stateof total and complete affliction in the world?Weil states that real compassion for the afflicted is an “impossibility”, and that when it exists it is an“astounding miracle”. This is because those who have never had contact with affliction can have noidea of what it is, indeed may not even recognise it. And those who suffer from it, “are in no state tohelp anyone at all, and they are almost incapable of even wishing to do so”. So how are we to givecompassion to a person in a state of extreme suffering that we don’t understand, cannot evenimagine?Although requiring close to a ‘miracle’, Weil believes that it is possible to give compassion to the afflictedby developing what she calls ‘attention’. She states that, “The afflicted need nothing else in this worldexcept people capable of giving them attention”. She outlines her concept of ‘attention’ in her notebooks,but most particularly in her essay, ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with A View to theLove of God’.Her essay is a meditation on the purpose, use and practice of study. For Weil, underlying all academicstudy is the use of ‘attention’- a concentrated focus on a particular object. This attention is marked byan ardent waiting with desire, and for Weil is elevated to the status of the sacred- it has the effect oflighting up the soul. Furthermore, her unique proposition is that study is a way for us to develop ourcapacity for this attention. In study we train ourselves to become more attentive. In fact, she states that,“the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost sole interest of studies”.The essay is an imaginative effort on Weil’s part to make a connection between the attention used instudy and the attention needed to be present for others, and ultimately with God.The act of ‘attention’ is a concentrated, unwavering focus of energy on an object. It is not however, anact of will where we go in search of knowledge. In fact, if we do search, Weil contends that we will endup finding false truths rather than truth, because we do not have the ability to discern the differencebetween them. Instead, we can only wait with earnest attention for truth, like God, to come to us.Vol. 4 No. 1 (April 2012)Page 5
Attention therefore is inextricably linked to waiting. Attention is an emptying out of the self and a waitingfor the object of our attention to penetrate us. Furthermore, she states that this waiting can only be ledby desire, it can only be fuelled by our desire rather than by will power:The intelligence can only be led by desire. For there to be desire, there must be pleasureand joy in the work. The intelligence only grows and bear fruit in joy. The joy of learningis as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.This desire is important, because giving attention is a difficult act, and would be impossible to do by willpower alone. On this, Weil explains:There is something in our soul which has a far more violent repugnance for true attentionthan the flesh has for bodily fatigue. This something is much more closely connected withevil than is the flesh. That is why every time that we really concentrate our attention, wedestroy the evil in ourselves.She links lack of attention with evil because it is essentially a refusal to see- a turning away from truth.This is particularly true when we are talking about looking at extreme suffering, something which wenaturally turn away from. The only way to see what is real is by an intense focusing of all our attentionon the object, led by desire and marked by a constant, enduring waiting.Weil shows remarkable perceptiveness in her analysis of the difficulty of attention, and our need to turnaway from it. It is a mark of our time and a common theme of our age that this lack of attention manifestsas escapism and rampant addiction- our need to be endlessly entertained, boundless materialconsumption as well as other addictions like drink, drugs and food. In particular, with the advent oftechnology we have been able to think up of more and more sophisticated ways to feed our addictivetendencies. At the heart of it, at the heart of all addictions is a turning away from something, an inabilityto just stay still and simply pay attention.Like the emptying out of the self that is needed in study, Weil states that this kind of attention is alsoneeded when encountering the other, to be able to really see them and to be present for them:The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it islooking at, just as he is, in all his truth only he who is capable of attention can do this.This self-emptying kind of attention then could bridge the gap between ourselves and the other inextreme affliction, with whom we cannot relate to in their suffering. For Weil, this attention becomesabsolutely necessary in relieving the suffering of another, in fact it is the only way and for this reason,it is crucial that we aim to develop our capacity for attention:To love our neighbour in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: what areyou going through? It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in acollection, or a specimen from the social category labeled “unfortunate,” but as a man,exactly like us, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction. For this reasonit is enough, but it is indispensable, to know how to look at him in a certain way.Attention then becomes a way of seeing when it is turned on the other; it is a capacity to see the other’sdistinctiveness and specificity. This is particularly needed in affliction where there is the addition ofanonymity, where the afflicted suffers anonymously and without recognition, and where they are seenas no more than a thing by others. What people who are suffering need most is for someone toacknowledge their specific pain, to see them beyond a category. The extent that we are able to see andVol. 4 No. 1 (April 2012)Page 6
acknowledge another’s pain depends on our capacity for attention, which when turned on the otherbecomes an act of witnessing.When Weil was working with the Free French Alliance in London, she wrote up a proposal for a ‘Projectfor a Corps of Frontline Nurses (to which Charles De Gaulle, after reading the proposal responded with“Elle est folle!” She is mad!). She proposed that a group of nurses would join soldiers in the battle field,administering first aid on the ground. Not only would they help the immediate suffering of the soldiers,but would also bring an essential moral vitality: their presence would give precious comfort to thesoldiers in their hour of suffering, a form of witnessing of their suffering. This demanded of the nursesa capacity for attention in order to be able to look directly at extreme suffering. Indispensable forwitnessing suffering then is a capacity for a self-emptying attention, one that is able to displace the selffrom the centre of the universe in order to receive the other as they are. This emptying out was alsoimportant for Weil in order to receive God’s grace.If anything, Simone’s greatest contribution for me is on how to witness another’s suffering; for her thiscan only come from giving real attention. She underlines how difficult it is, but also how it is of the utmostimportant and the only thing that will truly help to alleviate the suffering of the other. In some ways I seemy research as an act of witnessing- which requires the development of attention in the Weilian sense.And it is great that as I develop attention for ‘study’, at the same time I am developing attention that willbe important for witnessing others. I’m sure it is a grand, overblown objective, and that the everydayexperiences of actually being there doing fieldwork will pull me back to earth, as well as my own verylimited capacities. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to document this process throughout my year inMorocco; the difficulties, if not impossibility, of really witnessing the other.To the Red Virgin*(Sentences in italics are taken from Simone Weil’s factory diaries)* This was the ‘nickname’ given to her at universityPrecocious childA star in a sea of grainFlowing with the waterYet resolutely against itYou grew up to beNo one else with your breadthAnd depthYour boundless self-disciplineOh SimoneSister, teacher, stern criticYou are for me.Vol. 4 No. 1 (April 2012)Page 7
‘Painful morning - My legs hurt – I'm fed up, fed up.’Eternal outsider, eternal lightI can only imagine how lonely you must have beenThey ridiculed youBut you had your eyes on a bigger prizeBeyond anything anyone could seeOh Simone, I’m afraidThat I fall very short of your exampleThat I can’t live up to your light‘I woke up in agony; I went to the factory in fear: I worked like a slave.’Your words reach across space and timeLike an echo I heard long agoReaching some eternal part of meResonatingExplorer of sufferingAnd the human conditionUnflinching‘A worker made coils with the hooks a centimetre too short. The foreman said to him: "If they arescrewed, you're screwed."Deprived yourself ofFoodConsolationFalse godsPutting yourself beneath the lowest of the lowIt is there you knewYou would findTruthIn our day and ageWe understand nothing about sacrificeI’m afraid, SimoneThat if you were alive nowThey would still not listen to you‘The worker with tuberculosis was fired for having missed an order.’They said you wereCrazyHoly foolYou put your body on the lineAgain and againVol. 4 No. 1 (April 2012)Page 8
A Jew who did not want to be a JewA woman who did not want to be a womanA bourgeois who refused to be privilegedI see how your own demonsAllowed you to empathiseWith the oppressed‘At any moment, from clocking in to clocking out, a new order may come.’You were marked by your hungerOh Simone, the hunger haunts me tooHow did you bear it?Did you let it grow inside youLike a grain of goldPreciousHidden‘My sense of personal dignity as it has been manufactured by society has been completely broken.’And at the moment of your deathHaving lived your short lifeAs you had believedYou went awayQuietlyOnewithGod.May NgoVol. 4 No. 1 (April 2012)Page 9
Responding to Simone Weil Reading Simone Weil is like being exposed to a tornado, being hit on the head and drinking a clear glass of water all at once. I first read the book which this essay came from when I was in Paris, where . Waiting for God. In 1942, she was able to escape to the
5 Simone Weil, ‘Attention and Will’, translated by Emma Craufurd, in Simone Weil: An Anthology, 231–237, here 231. 6 Simone Weil, ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God’, in Waiting for God, 57–66, here 62. 7 Simone Weil, ‘Forms of the Implicit Love of God
Simone Weil and God 135 . iii Pascal on Diversions 137 Simone Weil on Attention 143 . Simone Weil, and Pascal a pathway by which we might think differently about what it is to pay . I conclude that attention might also be understood as a kind of waiting that does not specify an object,
Although most of Simone Weil's published writings are now avail-able in English, I feel that English readers will be interested in these notes of her lectures, taken down by Madame Anne Reynaud-Guerithault when she was a pupil in a girls lycee' at Roanne where Simone W
exactly the same sense that God is awaited in Simone Weil’s narrations. One is powerless to cause justice to arrive, or to make oneself experience God. Weil . turning-toward, a patient close attentive waiting, a willingness to abandon self in a loving
2. Prepare crucible with baking soda: Make a small crucible (with sides) out of aluminum foil as shown above Determine the mass of the crucible and record in Table 1; Line 1 Add approximately 2-g of baking soda to the pre-weighed crucible
The Crucible, by Arthur Miller an 11th-grade English Unit on Honesty and Justice Overview: The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, has been taught to our students as classic . Continue to read The Crucible, Act III, as a class, with each student reading his or her own part. If you do not finish Act III in class, assign the rest of .
The Crucible by Arthur Miller The Lyceum's production of The Crucible is sponsored by With additional support from Unity Theatre Trust The Crucible resource pack is part of The Lyceum's Discover Theatre programme. Discover Theatre is supported by: Dr Guthrie's Association The Martin Connell Charitable Trust The RS Macdonald Charitable Trust
Kesehatan gigi dan mulut yang kebersihannya terjaga merupakan bagian dari faktor yang mendukung terciptanya gigi dan mulut yang sehat, termasuk . 3 jaringan periodontal (Christiany, dkk, 2015). Keberhasilan pemeliharaan kesehatan gigi dan mulut dilakukan dengan tindakan menyikat gigi. Hal yang perlu diperhatikan dalam menyikat gigi adalah teknik menyikat gigi. Teknik menyikat gigi diantaranya .
